In today’s activity for Financial Literacy Month with FUTURES: Financially Literate Kids for a Financially Literate Society™, kids will put their marketing skills to the test in a business arena they know well—breakfast cereal! Kids will create the concept for their brand of cereal and will learn what it means to compete for “shelf space” at the grocery store by designing an appealing cereal box that includes “out-of-the-box” thinking, and savvy marketing strategies.
You’ll introduce the concept that even building a better cereal with awesome packaging is not enough to guarantee customers will buy the product. It’s the winning combination of the right product reaching the right market in the right ways—at the right times—that helps one product to take off over another. Entrepreneurs need to grasp all of these factors and this activity is a fun way to expose future entrepreneurs to the fundamentals of product creation, development, design, and marketing—with a healthy product the reinforces the importance of beginning the day with a healthy breakfast.
First, your creative design teams will need to learn some basics about advertising. Explain that companies find out information about their potential customers in order to effectively market, or sell, products to them. Tell them to consider the following questions when designing their cereal box:
Who is the target market?
What are their demographics (age, gender, race, location, education, income, and so on)?
What service or product is being sold?
What are the top three things about this cereal?
Why will the market like this?
What other cereals make similar claims?
While kids are the one who express the flavors they like, they are influencers, not the actual purchasers. How will the cereal and cereal box appeal to both kids and the adults making the actual purchasing decision?
How will the design influence opinion of your target market about your service or product?
How will the design separate this company from competition that sells something similar?
What are the benefits of the product or service?
How will the benefits appeal to the target market?
What will your competition say about the cereal, the name, and the packaging?
While your product designers might opt to create their own cereal, name it, and then design a cereal box, others might have a tough time getting started. One way to inspire creative thinking is to offer up a few ready-to-go ideas and scenarios. To help your team begin, introduce the following four cereal scenarios. Remind all designers, even those creating their own new product, to get clear on the market for their product.
Rainbow Bears
The target customer for Rainbow Bears Cereal is a young girl who loves colorful marshmallows.
Sound Bites
The target customer for Sound Bites Cereal is the teenager who loves to download music. He or she doesn’t mind eating healthy cereal as long as it’s sweet.
Change-O-Bots
The target customer for Change-O-Bots is a young boy. The young boy plays with robot toys and likes nuts and oats.
Strong Heart, Strong Body
The target customer for Strong Heart Strong Body is a working adult who isn’t concerned with bright colors or a sweet flavor, as long as the cereal is healthy. This customer would appreciate a coupon for a discount on healthy goods.
Get Creative!
After kids brainstorm ideas, determine if it makes best sense in your particular setting for kids to design independently or to work in small groups. You might divide your students into groups or family members might launch a dining room table competition.
Each individual or team creates a cereal box design that will appeal to the target customer described in the selected scenario. Kids can draw on a piece of paper using markets, crayons, pens or whatever you have on hand. Or use a graphic design program on the computer to design the box. Download this cereal box template to get you started.
Once the cereal boxes are designed, ask kids to find two positive things about each one presented, you might opt to invite friends, neighbors, or other classes in to judge! Have fun with this—all you'll need to provide is the prize inside! Reviewers can vote on which design wins. The winning design should be BOTH visually appealing AND especially suitable for its target customer. Discuss what made the design work so well.
To wrap up this activity, ask your kids:
What can you take away from this activity about what makes a product’s advertising successful? What type of cereal would you want to eat?
How would you market that kind of cereal to a target customer like yourself?
Then, of course, you can end your competition presentation by serving bowls of cereal to all participants, judges, and contributors!
Visit Us Every Day in April
Check back tomorrow as we continue Financial Literacy Month with this week’s Weekend Reading recommendations.
For more information about FUTURES: Financially Literate Kids for a Financially Literate Society™ for students in kindergarten through eighth grade or to download any of the 29 sections of the program, please click below.